Some of her work can also be found on display at the Lake Placid Center for the Arts as part of the center’s Flower Power Juried Art Show on display through March 31.

“Oh, she’s great. Everybody likes her,” said Terpsie Toon, who directs the center’s School of Ballet and Dance.

A native of Geneseo, Battaglia moved to Lake Placid in 1978 as a recent graduate of Syracuse University. Legendary North Country newsman Jack LaDuke had hired her on behalf of the Lake Placid Olympic Organizing Committee to be the official still photographer for the 1980 Winter Games here.

“I was in charge of a whole team of photographers,” Battaglia said. “It was great, but I preferred to shoot more instead of be the person in charge. The high school served as the press center. That was pretty interesting.”

Among the events she did shoot include the opening and closing ceremonies, alpine skiing, speedskating, luge and bobsled races.

“I thought I was done with the Olympics after Lake Placid,” she said.

Not quite.

Battaglia has since photographed 11 more games, – nine winter and two summer – and has observed her share of changes.

“Back in 1980, they only had two- and four-man bobsleds. No women’s at all. There was no skeleton, no freestyle skiing, no trick skiing or snowboarding, and no curling,” she said.

Memorable highlights from 1980 include the raucous all-night celebration all over town the night the U.S. beat the Soviets in what she referred to as simply, “the hockey game.”

“The noise in the streets after the hockey game was louder and more memorable than after the gold medal game that followed,” she said.

Battaglia liked how most of the events were held within walking distance of each other.

“Things are not as compact as they were in Lake Placid. Today some events can be as many as three bus rides away,” she said.

Battaglia said she preferred not to get into the not-so-memorable lowlights from 1980, only that they mostly involved “small town politics.”

In terms of how photography has evolved she said, “It’s gone from analog to digital, so it’s pretty immediate. You have to take a computer with you now, so it’s a little more instant than it used to be.”

Having recently returned from the Pyeongchang games, she said, “It was good. I think they put on a good show, but there wasn’t a lot of Olympic spirit. The mountain venues in particular were very subdued. There wasn’t much of a party feel there. Most of the yelling and screaming happened when a Korean was competing and doing well.”

By contrast, she said, the atmosphere outside the four indoor venues at the Gangneung Olympic Park was lively and full of spirit as spectators poured out of the stadiums after the events to celebrate or rehash what had just taken place.

“The facilities there were absolutely amazing,” she said.

Among the events Battaglia shot at Pyeongchang included the opening ceremony, hockey, skeleton, bobsled, halfpipe, super-G, downhill, nordic combined, cross-country skiing, biathlon and luge, which included the two-page spread of Chris Mazdzer in Sports Illustrated.

“He had a rough season early on,” she said of Mazdzer. “He felt as if he was doing everything right, but the results weren’t showing what he was feeling. He wasn’t medaling at all. He was a pretty low dog early in the season.”

In 2009, however, Battaglia was the top dog in Sports Illustrated when she was among those who earned a Photo of the Year award. Hers was an aerial view of the Adirondack Canoe Classic (“The 90-Miler”) as paddlers came through Brown’s Tract.

Although she has achieved considerable success as a sports photographer, she’s not just a one-trick pony. She also does nature scenes in the Adirondacks where she is a two-time 46er having twice climbed all 46 of the High Peaks. At a 2013 solo exhibit at the LPCA where her works covered nearly every available inch of wall and table space, a reviewer for lakeplacid.com wrote, “It’s art, history and stories all rolled into one. Amazing.”

“I shoot lots of stuff,” Battaglia said. “Active lifestyle, sports, architecture, features, news, commercial and so on. I do some nature shots but usually my ‘nature’ has a human element. I’ve always said I lead a double life. There are people who know me as a sports photographer, and there are people who know me as an Adirondack photographer.

“I became interested in photography as a kid. We had lots of magazines around the house like Life, Look, et cetera. Also my mother’s family always seemed to be taking photos, so we had cameras around the house. In high school I asked a professor at SUNY Geneseo if I could audit a photo course and he said yes, so as a senior I took a course or two at SUNY Geneseo.

“I chose to go to Syracuse for photography at their Newhouse School of Public Communications where I did undergraduate and graduate work. I actually have a degree in photography, which seems an oddity in this day and age of iPhones and photos all day all the time by everyone and anyone.”

After her first big photo assignment fresh out of college 40 years ago, Battaglia still lives in Lake Placid with her husband, Ed Finnerty, vice president and counsel for Champlain National Bank. For more than 30 years she was usually seen with a golden retriever or two, but she currently has no dogs.

Any more Olympics in her future?

“Well, we’ll see. I’ve done 12, and that’s a good number. I haven’t decided,” she said.